


Unbeliever

by josephina_x



Series: Magic, Mayhem, and Madness [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mental Disintegration, Mental Institutions, Mystery, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 04:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark doesn't know what to make of all this. Lex is acting strange. Lana won't talk to him, Chloe and his dad both give him bad advice... and it's all his fault because he listened to all of <i>them</i> instead of <i>Lex</i>. --Well, he's not making <i>that</i> mistake again!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sunday, November 3, 2002: ...the Farmer's Market, with farmers fair and biased...

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Unbeliever  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through 2x06, takes place shortly thereafter; occurs prior to 2x07; spoilers for later seasons  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: Clark doesn't know what to make of all this. Lex is acting strange. Lana won't talk to him, Chloe and his dad both give him bad advice... and it's all his fault because he listened to all of _them_ instead of _Lex_. --Well, he's not making _that_ mistake again!  
>  Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Next after "Vessel" in the "Magic, Mayhem, and Madness" series. More of a coda before the 'next big push'.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark was unloading bushels of apples from the back of their old pickup truck at the weekly farmer's market when Chloe bounced up to him and him dad.

"Clark!" she said, sounding excited. "Guess what!"

Clark, not really in the greatest mood, picked up a bushel basket, then turned and frowned at her.

"Lex was just committed to Belle Reeve this afternoon!"

Clark felt numb.

"...What?" he managed to croak out.

"Yeah -- crazy, right?" she said, eyes shining brightly like they always did when she was sharing what she thought was a really juicy story. "After I saw you yesterday, I ran into some of his staff from the mansion wandering around town. I cornered a couple of them and got them talking, and they said that he'd chased them out, yelling like a maniac, when they'd got in that morning. And then his dad heard about it, and when Lionel finally got back from Metropolis and stormed the place a couple hours ago, they found Lex in the library and he was hallucinating seeing his dead mother--"

The basket slipped from Clark's nerveless fingers and hit the ground.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Friday, November 2, 2002: ...brightly burning anger, engendering confusion...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark was frowning as he walked into the Torch. They might have the day off from school, but a little thing like that wouldn't keep Chloe from her newspaper work. He fully expected to see her there, and here she was.

"Chloe, do you know what's up with Lana today?" he asked without preamble. He'd run across her in town, and she hadn't even said hi -- wouldn't give him the time of day. He was half-worried he'd done something wrong and didn't know about it... "She's in a really bad mood."

"Yeah, I know," Chloe snorted, dropping a stack of folders on her desk and coming around the side. "Something happened last night between her and Luthor."

Oh geez. "What did Lionel do?" Clark asked with a growing dread.

" _Lionel?_ " Chloe blinked, then laughed slightly. At Clark's frown, she explained, "It was _Lex_ , not Lionel."

"What, really?" Clark said dubiously. "What'd he do?" he asked, wondering.

"I don't know," Chloe admitted, "but whatever it was was bad enough that she slapped him across the face for it -- in the middle of the Talon, no less! He even apologized."

Clark's mouth dropped open.

"Yeah, you think _that's_ bad -- even _I_ couldn't get whatever-it-was out of Lana, and I've been trying all morning," Chloe added. "So if it's got our little fairy princess up in arms _that_ badly about it, it's gotta be horrific, right? --I take it you were a no-go yourself?"

Clark shook his head.

"Well, let me know if you can get anything out of Lex," Chloe told him as she scooped up a few binders and walked out the door with him. "He didn't seem real inclined to talk with me this morning." She frowned. "He looked a little out of it, actually."

Clark couldn't imagine any of it. Lex, 'out of it'? Lana slapping Lex? Lex, _letting_ her do it, and then apologizing to _her_ for it? ...Well, ok, he could see the last bit. But still--!

He frowned as he made his way back home. His dad was trying to catch up with farmwork, and had wanted Clark to help him out during the day. If he hurried, and went slow and careful through only the things his dad insisted on doing normal-speed, he could probably rush through things and be able to catch up with Lex right as he got home from work...

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Friday, November 1, 2002: ...home again, home again, lickety-split...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark felt a little angry as he super-sped home after the seance-thing at the mansion.

How could Lex say that Lana wasn't a friend? They co-owned the Talon, for god's sake!

And all that craziness about doing anything for _Clark_? But not Lana? And calling Lana a liar, but then taking it back?

Complaining about her slapping him, but only to Clark?

_"I didn't do anything wrong! I did what she asked, and then what she wanted, and-- I didn't--!_

_\--She asked me to! I did what she thought she wanted!"_

Lex said he didn't remember what had happened, but...

...that sounded a whole lot like he'd tried to do something nice for her and had it backfire. _Badly._

Except that supposedly Lana not being a "friend" would mean that he _wouldn't_ try to do something for her, if Clark had understood Lex correctly, and all this was making his head hurt.

But, seriously, what could Lex have done that would have made Lana so mad she was unable to forgive him? She'd even forgiven Whitney for stringing him up as the Scarecrow -- so how bad would what Lex had done have to be?

And how did Lex get to bed afterwards? Did Lana help put him to bed? ...Did he make a pass at her, or something?

But... that didn't seem right. Lex wouldn't do that.

He wasn't interested in Lana; Lana was too young, and they worked together, and he'd even been helping _Clark_ try to win her heart.

And would Lana have gotten horribly offended if he had, anyway, with him being so drunk? She knew that he used to go out with a lot of women; she'd even told Clark about how she'd first met him, about that pool and the 'breaststroke' and all of it. She'd gotten hit on by drunk guys before; she knew how to handle herself. She wouldn't do anything stupid, and if Lex had -- which seemed _really_ unlikely to Clark -- she might get angry, but not so mad that she wouldn't even talk about it with anyone else.

\--And there hadn't been the least bit of meteor rock in **any** of the seance stuff. He'd handled every piece; he would've felt it if there was. So whatever had happened to knock Lex out last night, it couldn't have been the meteor rock that had done whatever-it-was.

And it _was_ **something** \-- Lex _had_ been acting weird, and Clark was pretty sure it hadn't just been him being really drunk...

\--None of it made any sense!

"Clark?" he was greeted by his dad at the door. "Where have you been?"

Clark stifled a groan. "At Lex's place."

He got a deep frown from his dad. "It's eleven-thirty at night, Clark."

"It's a Friday night," Clark shot back peevishly because, geez, he had a 9pm curfew on school nights, not weekends!

And if he'd been at Pete's and stretched it 'til midnight, he'd not have heard 'boo' about it.

"Clark, we've got to get up at 6am tomorrow; we've got work to do," his dad told him.

"Then maybe you should be in bed, too," Clark shot back, stomping up the stairs. It's not like he'd _asked_ his dad to stay up waiting for him like some middle-schooler -- he was fifteen for goodness' sake!

"Clark!" his father protested, and Clark stopped on the landing, hand on the banister.

"Yeah?" he said angrily.

His dad frowned in concern as he turned off the lights and walked over. "What happened tonight?"

"I was helping Lex with something," Clark told him. "I thought it might be a meteor rock thing."

"You get it sorted?" his dad asked, though it was obvious from his tone that he didn't care about what that meant for Lex when he asked it -- just Clark.

"No," Clark said frustratedly. "I don't even know if it was a meteor rock thing, anymore. It's all... weird. We didn't really figure it out, yet."

After a pause, his dad said, "Well, it can probably wait a few days until after we've taken care of most of the corn harvest," and clapped him on the shoulder as he passed Clark going up the staircase.

Clark grimaced, sighed, and followed him up. It _was_ pretty late, and he was kind of tired. Maybe things would make more sense in the morning.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. Saturday, November 2, 2002: ...3 A.M. and all is not well, by the tolling of the bell...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark woke muzzily to the thump of feet going past his door and down the stairs.

Half-asleep, he glanced at the clock. 3:17am.

He rolled over in bed, frowning to himself.

Then he came awake more fully as he realized that the phone was ringing.

Because who the heck would be calling at this hour unless it was an emergency?

Clark shoved the covers back and slipped out of bed in his boxers and nightshirt. He padded down the steps, wanting to know what was going on.

He heard the phone cut off mid-ring and his dad say, "Hello? Who is this?" as he slowly approached the kitchen.

"This is Lex," he heard from the headset from three steps away, and Clark frowned, wondering what was going on.

Jonathan frowned, too, but he was too tired to manage anything more caustic than a half-hearted, "...Luthor?"

There was silence on the line, and Clark started to worry. Had something happened after he'd left?

"Do you know what time it is?" his dad asked, trying to get to the point.

"I-- know..." but Lex sounded confused, which was weird...

"What do you want?" Jonathan asked, scrubbing at his face to try and wake himself up a bit more, and he glanced up at Clark and waved Clark away when he reached for the phone.

Clark made a face. If his dad didn't want to talk to Lex, then why couldn't he just let Clark--

"I... I need... help."

Clark started and sucked in a breath because, holy shit, had _Lex_ just asked _his dad_ for--?

_\--How desperate was he?_

Clark zipped upstairs and got dressed again, then back down to the phone.

And he nearly yanked the phone out of his dad's hands, but got batted off again and, yeah, now his dad was glaring at him.

Well, Clark glared right back, while his dad ran a hand through his hair, covered the receiver with his hand for a moment, mouthed 'wait' at Clark, and then continued the conversation.

"Help with what?" his dad asked Lex.

"Ghosts."

...What?

"Ghosts," his dad echoed dully, with an incredulous look. He glanced up at Clark, but all Clark could do was stare, and then shrug once, feeling a little...

"Ye-es..." he heard Lex say, and he sounded nervous.

Yeah, Clark could understand why.

"You are worried about ghosts," his dad repeated with a hard frown, like he was trying to wrap his brain around the concept.

"...Yes," said Lex after a moment.

"And so you call here at three-thirty in the morning?" his dad said angrily, giving Clark another _look_.

Clark winced. He wasn't supposed to get phone calls from his friends after 10pm, and even then...

"...yes?" he barely heard over the line, and when had Lex ever sounded so small?

"Dad..." Clark said quietly, stepping forward.

But his dad just told Lex, "Get yourself to bed, quit jumping at shadows, and deal with it yourself," and hung up the phone.

"K-k--" he barely heard Lex begin to say before the line clicked off.

" _Dad!_ " Clark exclaimed, looking between the phone and his father with consternation. He hadn't even gotten to talk to--!

"Clark, I know you heard him, son," his dad said, and yeah, if he could hear his mom talking to him through loud music under his headphones, he could definitely hear Lex over the phone in a quiet, settled house.

"He said he needed help!" Clark protested, reaching for the phone to call him back.

"He was drunk, Clark," his dad told him.

Clark winced.

"That's not really his fault--" Clark started, then stopped at the look his dad was giving him.

"Clark," his dad sighed, and then he seemed to... give up almost, shaking his head. "Sometimes when adults get very, very drunk, they can make... odd phone calls--"

"Yeah, drunk calling," Clark said, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. "I know about that."

"Then you should know that you shouldn't take seriously what he says when he does it, and that he probably won't even remember it the next morning," his dad told him, walking towards him. "People do odd things when they black out."

"Lex says he doesn't black out on just alcohol," Clark told him crossly.

There was a long pause as his dad got a stony look.

"...I'm sure Luthor _says_ a lot of things, son. That doesn't make them so," his dad said almost dangerously, and yeah, his dad might be tired, but not so tired to let _that_ one go, apparently.

"But he asked _you_ for help, dad," Clark tried. "Do you really think he would have done that if he didn't mean it?"

His dad protested, "Clark--" but for some reason stopped himself there.

Clark moved around him and grabbed up the phone from its cradle.

"Son--"

"I want to talk to him myself," Clark said adamantly, dialing the mansion back -- not Lex's cellphone, because he doubted that Lex would have had the presence of mind to have reassembled his phone rather than use one of the landlines, given how drunk he'd been when Clark had left.

"Son, hang up the phone," his dad told him, tired and irritated.

Well, Clark was irritated, too. And he _wasn't_ hanging up.

Except...

"Clark?" his father asked, moving towards him and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Nobody's picking up," Clark said, hanging up, then picking it up again and redialing.

His dad frowned, but then got a resigned, patient look and took a step back, leaned against the kitchen table to wait.

Clark was tense and twitchy by the time he hung up the third time.

"I'm going over there," Clark said.

"Clark, it's nearly four in the morning," his dad told him reasonably. "And if Luthor had actually needed or wanted the help, he'd have picked up when you called back."

"Unless he couldn't," Clark said.

"Clark, if he was in any real danger over there, he would've been scared stone-cold sober, and he wouldn't've sounded like _that_ ," his dad told him with a sigh and a pat on the shoulder. "You shouldn't worry about him."

"Well, I do," Clark complained. "He's my friend."

"I know," his dad said sourly. "But he's a grown man and can take care of himself."

Clark grimaced.

"Clark--"

"Well, what would you do if a drunk friend of yours asked for help like that?!" Clark exclaimed, shrugging his dad's hand off of his shoulder angrily.

"I'd leave him be to let him sleep it off, then let him apologize sheepishly the next morning for calling me up in the first place," his dad told him with a sigh.

"I'd rather have Lex call here and have it be a false alarm than _not_ call here, if something might be wrong," Clark grumbled back belligently. Even if it was three-thirty in the morning.

" _I know_ ," his dad groused, then gave up with another sigh. "Just-- ...you should get back to bed, too, son," he continued. "We'll be up again early soon enough. We've got a lot to catch up on this weekend with the farm."

Clark grimaced, knowing that was true -- even moreso with his mother splitting her time between working for Lionel and helping out with the farm, these days. So after with one last long look at the phone, he listened to his father and trudged back upstairs to change back into nightclothes and fall asleep.

Because, well, his dad was probably right. If it had been real ghosts, Lex wouldn't've sounded as calm as he did -- he'd have been a complete mess instead of just a little nervous, right? It would wait 'til the morning. Lex could tell him what was going on later and apologize for calling so early...

~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Saturday November 2, 2002: ...later that morning, but not too late...

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark sighed as he sat at their table at the Talon -- his and Lex's -- and finally realized that, given what had happened with Lana yesterday, Lex might think to avoid her here since she was on shift today. Which meant that Clark was wasting his time waiting for Lex to show up for their usual Saturday morning muffin talk.

\--Which was an actual muffin talk: Clark brought in a batch of his mom's homemade muffins for the Talon to sell, Clark made sure Lex got one of the freshest ones, and they talked about muffin-related things while Lex ate a few Martha-Kent-supplied breakfast items. (Clark figured it was sort of a compromise, since his mom couldn't just invite Lex over to eat a Saturday brunch with them because dad would get all nuts about it and make everybody miserable, but she felt guilty about it and wanted him to eat more. It sort of worked out, Clark guessed.)

But if Lex wasn't showing up for his usual muffin and stuff, then how would Clark be able to talk to him about the night before and make sure he was okay?

His dad was already gonna kill him for 'disappearing' on him for this long during this weekend's harvest-push, never mind that Clark could super-speed through most things on the farm to make up the lost time. If he ran over to Lex's mansion now, though, he'd _never_ hear the end of it.

So Clark sat there feeling frustrated, and a little angry with himself over even _thinking_ of eating Lex's muffin for him. Because that would be wrong.

"Hey, Clark!" Chloe said, sidling up to him and taking Lex's seat. Ugh.

...Clark finally gave up and started making short work of Lex's muffin. He'd need the fortification to get through this. Chloe was trying even at the best of times, and Clark was already feeling irritated. Surely Lex would understand?

"So I was asking around about Lex," Chloe started without preamble.

"Uh huh," Clark said.

"And--"

"Did you get Lana to talk?" Clark interrupted.

"--Well, no," Chloe frowned. "But--"

Clark mostly tuned her out at that point, because that was really the only thing he had wanted to know, and she didn't.

...at least until Chloe started saying some weird things that caught his attention.

"--What do you mean, 'he looked rumpled'?" Clark asked, looking up, and frowning a little at the thought.

"Yesterday morning he was wearing clothes that looked like he'd slept in them," Chloe said succinctly. "And he seemed a bit out of it."

Clark's frown deepened. "He didn't look like that when I saw him yesterday."

"Really?" Chloe said, perking up. "When did you see him?"

"After school," Clark said. "I caught him right when he was coming home from work."

" _Really,_ " Chloe said, and Clark felt a little odd at her reaction.

"What?" he asked, straightening in his chair.

"Oh, nothing," she said, in a tone of voice that made it clear that it wasn't nothing -- not in the least.

"Chloe," Clark said warningly. Since when didn't she ever give up the goods on someone?

\--Besides when she didn't want to tip off a possible source, or someone she _didn't_ want in-the-know, that is...

Chloe made a face, seemed to be weighing something, then sighed and her shoulders dropped. She leaned forward, put her elbows on the table, propped her chin on her fists, and said, "Ok, fine. Level with me -- what did Lex tell you about Lana when he came home from work?"

Well, if that was what it took to get her confidence, that wasn't really a big deal. Clark had been hoping to get a second opinion from her on what had happened last night, anyway -- or rather, what _hadn't_ \-- at some point. Now wasn't really the best time, but...

"Lex said he couldn't remember the night before," Clark admitted easily enough. "He said that Lana wanted to perform a seance at his house in the library and, well, he kind of accidentally got roped into it. He didn't want to do it," Clark sighed, "and he didn't want it _there_ , but he was worried about what would have happened to Lana if he'd said 'no', and she did it in the cemetery or something, I guess." Clark shrugged. "He said he remembers everything up until midnight, and then nothing until the next morning."

"Huh," said Chloe, sitting back.

Clark nodded. "What's really weird is that he woke up in bed, but doesn't remember how he got there, the seance stuff didn't have _any_ meteor rock in it -- and I mean _none_ , we checked pretty carefully -- and the library was trashed when he and I walked in that afternoon, but nobody in the mansion seemed to have done it, and Lex said it was ok that morning," he said, listing each off in successsion, and trying not to feel like he was missing the bigger picture somehow, with only small snapshots of even smaller pieces of it.

Chloe's eyebrows went up.

"Somebody pulled a B&E on Luthor's library?" Chloe asked, leaning forward again.

"Sort of. Not really." Clark frowned again, considering. "Lex locked the doors himself, and they were still locked when we got there until he unlocked them. It didn't look like anyone had broken in. Even Lex didn't think that."

"Who else could have gotten in?" Chloe asked, intrigued.

"Nobody, really," Clark said, crossing his arms and feeling stumped.

"So our favorite bald billionaire was the only one with a key?"

"...Well, no," Clark admitted. "Some of the staff did, and could have, except that everybody had an alibi. Lex interviewed everybody, and he had the guards check the security tapes, too." Even though they didn't give full coverage of the building -- and none inside it either, duh, because who would want somebody acting all creeper-stalker watching them all the time? Not Lex, Clark bet. "And nobody weird got onto the premises, as far as anyone knows."

"You're sure?"

"Lex wouldn't have gotten so frustrated if he hadn't been," Clark pointed out with a soft frown, "and with the way everybody was acting... a bunch of people would have had to have been lying. It..." had gotten pretty ugly at the end there, with everybody accusing each other and stuff. Lex hadn't really handled it well. He should've calmed them down and told him he trusted them once he'd realized nobody was lying and it probably hadn't been anybody's fault even -- just like that meteor-rock-tattoo business hadn't been anything that anybody could've planned for, or stopped.

The fact that he'd gone off on that 'ghost kick' thing as a supposedly-possible explanation had been a pretty strong clue.

\--but Lex hadn't done that. He hadn't settled everyone down or tried to ease anyone's frustration or fears of being fired for something they didn't do, and it had gotten way out of hand, instead.

"...it was pretty bad?" Chloe prompted, but when Clark looked up, he realized it wasn't just a guess.

"What are people saying?" Clark nearly groaned out.

"Well," Chloe smirked. "Some of the kids at school weren't all that thrilled about their parents being home so early on a vacation night. Kind of messed up their Friday night plans, from what I've heard through the grapevine so far," she said, sounding like she was trying to stifle a laugh. "I haven't had a chance to talk to the staff themselves, though," she sighed. "Maybe tonight or tomorrow -- do they have different shifts?"

Clark grimaced and shook his head. "You might have better luck just heading over to the mansion," he said, then blinked. Because why hadn't he thought of sending Chloe over in the first place? She was way beter at finding out meteor-stuff than he was!

...Oh, right, she was better at finding out meteor-stuff than he was. And then ending up in the middle of it. While he'd be back at home on the farm, away from them both, and unable to help, or even know if and when he was needed. Drat.

Lex probably wouldn't be real happy about having to deal with her _and_ a monster-hangover from the night before, either.

"Um, maybe you should wait to go over," Clark said, thinking that maybe stirring up the hornet's nest could stand to wait a day or two.

"Why?" Chloe asked, because she wouldn't be Chloe if she didn't.

"...Because you won't want to run into Lex right away?" At the _look_ he got, he elaborated. "He's probably got a really bad hangover right now?" Clark said, trying not to glance down at his watch. It was barely 8:30 in the morning, and yeah, ok, maybe the almost-certain hangover was part of Lex's reason for not coming, too.

"...Why would Lex have a hangover?" Chloe asked, sounding suspicious.

"Um," Clark said, trying not to blush. "Because I... kind of made him...? Drink? A lot? Last night?"

Chloe eyeballed him.

"He was really drunk on Halloween, too, apparently," Clark said, trying not to squirm in place. "We tried to redo the seance-ritual-thing, to, um, see if what happened. Might happen. Again. To, uh, figure it out."

Wow, ok, and he thought his _mom_ was good at making him feel bad. Chloe's glare was just--

" _Seriously??_ " she said.

"Um," said Clark.

" _Clark,_ " she huffed out, sitting back and looking at him like he was the dumbest guy _ever_.

"It was Lex's idea!" Clark blurted out, then winced, because he belatedly remembered how Lex had said later that he didn't want to do it.

...And, uh, earlier. He hadn't really wanted to do it earlier, either.

Or when Lana had wanted to do it.

"Oh, _really?_ " Chloe said, and now she was looking interested again -- what the hell?

"Ok, maybe not. --What?!" Clark said defensively, crossing his arms.

"You _made_ Lex do something he didn't want to do," Chloe said in an amused tone. " **You**. _Really_."

Clark frowned.

"Ok, Clark, look -- _nobody_ makes Lex Luthor do something he doesn't want to do, _believe me_ ," Chloe informed him. "There are epic stories about what happens to people who do, or at least _try to_. Spoiler alert: they end badly for the person doing the pushing. And Lex _never_ ends up doing whatever they wanted. In _all_ of them."

"He did what _Lana_ wanted," Clark said. "He did that for the Talon, too."

Chloe eyeballed him again.

"You have that on his say-so," Chloe said. "And the Talon _was_ a good idea. --Still is," she added quickly as Lana walked by.

"Lana--" Clark said, standing up.

"I'm busy!" Lana snapped, trying to move around him.

Clark stepped into her way for a second, because this was important. "Lana, Lex told me about the seance--"

Wow and _holy shit_ \--! Clark might be invulnerable, but he knew better than to stay in her way after _that_ reaction. He was pretty sure that Lana would have killed him _horribly_ if he hadn't stopped right there, shut up, and let her march off, with or _without_ meteor rock.

Chloe whistled lowly as Clark sat back down, feeling hangdog and a little jittery, even.

"Taking your life in your hands there, Clark?"

"Yikes," he said quietly, running his hands through his hair and then propping his elbows on the table.

Chloe gave him a long look. Then she looked after Lana and pursed her lips.

"Y'know," she said slowly. "There is another possibility besides meteor rock phenomeon or... er, ghosts," she said, looking like the last was just laughable and almost painful for her to even say.

Clark blinked up at her. "There is?" he asked hopefully, because if there was a reason in all this madness, Clark would totally take it!

Chloe nodded.

"What?" Clark asked.

"A prank."

Clark blinked at her.

"Huh?"

"A prank," Chloe repeated.

Clark frowned. "You think Lex pranked Lana?" he said incredulously.

Chloe blinked and frowned at him. "Nooo," she said. "I think he's pranking _you_. Him and Lana, I mean," she added, glancing after the Lana in question, "although I guess him pranking _both_ of you could be a possibility, too. But I think the first one -- Lex and Lana against Kent, round one, prank! -- is way more likely."

"Why would you think that?" Clark said, aghast.

"Because I can't think of any other time that Little Miss Town Princess has _ever_ gotten that mad at _anybody_ before," Chloe said. "Or for that long. Especially without saying anything to anyone, let alone _refusing_ to. Have you?"

Clark was about to protest, because Chloe had only been in town since the eighth grade, but... she had a point about Lana's behavior. "I... haven't. I've never seen her react this way to anything before," and this was part of why he was so concerned about it.

"Right. --And why would she be so angry at _us_ for something _Lex_ did? So maybe she's not _re_ acting, just _acting_ ," Chloe said reasonably. "She pulls you in, wondering what happened with Lex, she and Lex do a little roleplay in the center of the Talon, so you're bound to hear about it from me, and..." Chloe spread her hands out. "You're up at the mansion in record time, looking for answers in all the wrong places to all the wrong things. --And then he _gets_ you," she ended with a half-apologetic smile.

"Lex wouldn't do that," Clark said hotly, feeling his jaw clench. He knew Lex better than that. For Lex to have him up there chasing after something that wasn't true under false pretenses was... well, that was the worst kind of lie. And having it be a prank? Just a mean-spirited _joke_ he was trying to pull off? That was...

That was _betrayal_. And Lex wouldn't do that, because he wouldn't want it done to him. Never had. Because once you betrayed someone...

...No, he wouldn't do that -- especially not to Clark. They were friends.

_I'd do anything for a friend._

...Even lie to and play a joke on _another_ friend if they were asked to?

Oh god, what if Lex _did_ consider Lana a friend like Clark had thought, and _she'd_ been the one who'd wanted to play a prank on Clark with Lex's help?

Something in Clark's gut twisted uncomfortably at the thought.

...Lex had been working with Lana a lot more with all the stuff at the Talon, too, Clark realized. He'd even been spending more time with her than he had been with Clark.

\--Was it possible that Lex thought Lana was a better friend than Clark?

Clark started feeling a little sick.

"Yeah," Chloe said quietly, and Clark grimaced and looked away. "Clark, it wouldn't be the first time, okay? He's kind of got a reputation for playing bad practical jokes that aren't funny, from back when he was in high school."

"He's not in high school," Clark protested.

"But _we_ are," Chloe pointed out. "Look -- it makes sense, okay? Lana knows how to act from all her cheerleading stuff -- they're used to putting on a happy-smiley-Stepford-front, so why not an angry-huffy one?" Chloe put out there. "I know some of them do, playing games with their boyfriends."

"Lana's not like that," Clark said dully, when what he really wanted to say was _Lex would never do that to me_.

"Clark, come on," Chloe cajoled him, leaning forward over the table. "It's the only thing that makes sense. Think about it," she said. "Lana is acting angry because she's acting. Lex was 'dazed and confused' because he was acting. It's not like he doesn't know how to put up a good front, from all the Luthor family publicity and the whole 'living the high life' thing he's got going on."

"Yeah, because getting exiled to a town in the middle of nowhere _away_ from all that stupid Club Zero stuff is something he really loves doing, gets him plastered all over the papers daily and everything," Clark muttered to hmself, and even _he_ wasn't sure how much of that was sarcasm or not.

"Lex probably messed up the library last night with Lana," Chloe continued. "Maybe they got some weird cathartic thing going on, wrecked the place, and then locked the doors so nobody would go in and clean up after them."

Clark's head spun at that one, because there were _so_ many things wrong with that. "What, you think his staff is in on it, too?" Clark said, because he _knew_ that wasn't the case!

"No," Chloe said firmly. "He probably _did_ warn everybody off so that he got honest reactions out of them when he accused them later."

"That's horrible," Clark said. Then he added, "Lex said it was fine that morning!"

"The operative words being 'Lex said'," Chloe said in return. "How bad was the damage?" she pressed him.

"...Pretty bad," Clark had to admit. "Lex said it looked worse than after the tornado and, uh, he wasn't that wrong," Clark winced. "The walls, ceiling, floor, and windows were intact, but the rest..."

"Yeah, ok, well, if it wasn't like that last night, forget nobody knowing about it -- _somebody_ would have heard that sort of wrecking spree taking place," Chloe pointed out. "Locked door or no -- even if they had instructions not to go in, if they heard something like _that_ taking place, don't you think they would've gone in to try and stop it?"

Clark winced. "But Lex--"

"--lied? So what? It'd all just be part of the joke," Chloe said. "They probably thought that it'd be too obvious that it was a 'trick' if they did it on Halloween, so they waited a day to pull you in."

"That doesn't make any sense," Clark said. "Why would they do that?"

"Who knows?" Chloe said. "Maybe Lana got drunk that night too, not just Lex, and after they wrecked the place they stopped and tried to think of what to do with it and came up with the 'best prank idea ever'," Chloe said, sighing and propping her chin up on a fist, watching Clark. "I mean, you _are_ the poster boy for gullibility," she added.

"What?!?!" Clark said, shoving himself back from the table.

"Oh, come on," Chloe said, rolling her eyes. "You go with practically anything anybody tells you about meteor rock stuff without any evidence. Stuff nobody else would ever believe, even with evidence."

"Because I trust you, and Lana, and Lex... and Pete," he added belatedly, because if there was a guy for practical jokes, it was _Pete_ , not Lex. "--But I don't see why you'd think that Lana and Lex would destroy his library for some stupid joke," Clark said, because Lex _loved_ that library, and-- and--

Chloe just rolled her eyes. "It's always the silent ones that snap the most violently," Chloe said. "And Lex is kind of known for having a temper. They probably both enjoyed themselves doing it, egged each other on, and before they thought to stop..." she trailed off.

That left Clark even more agog. "Why would **anybody** enjoy _destroying_ something?"

"You've never gotten angry and just wanted to break something?" Chloe asked, tilting her head at him.

"No!" Clark said, shocked, but that was an automatic reaction, because when he really thought about it...

...it wasn't the destruction that he didn't enjoy. He _did_ enjoy it. When he did it on purpose. It was just the _guilt_ afterwards that wrecked it and...

"Lana just found out about her mother and her dad," Chloe pointed out. "And her bio-dad may not have wanted her. Plus, her aunt's stonewalling her, and has been lying to her about how her mom was supposedly happy cheerleading and everything, when she really wasn't. That's bound to bring up some issues, and maybe a little rage."

Clark winced again.

"Lex was probably just trying to help out," Chloe told him. "And maybe it got a little out of hand, and then maybe they thought they could get some extra mileage out of it," Chloe said. "Like, maybe get a little even with what happened a couple weeks ago, when you went all black-leather-jacket rebel-without-a-cause on us."

"What?" Clark blurted out. He'd apologized for all of that already!

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger!" Chloe said, raising her hands. "Lana's still pissed off about how you left her hanging at the Wild Coyote and ran off with Jessie in tow -- _believe_ me, she won't be over it anytime soon, either."

"I-- I wasn't--" Clark stammered. "I didn't mean to--" He winced. "I mean--"

"--You were high or drugged or on something. Supposedly." Chloe rolled her eyes again.

Then she blinked at him.

"...You were _on something?_ " she said, her eyebrows disappearing behind her bangs. "Oh my god, Pete was right!?"

"I-- not on _purpose!_ " Clark whispered to her, wincing. "I... god, Chloe, please, please _please_ don't ask, okay?" he begged. " _Please_."

"Clark--"

"I know what to look out for now -- it _won't_ happen again," he said, starting to get abject in his begging. " _Please_." _God, drop this, just this once, please please let this go and drop this!_

Chloe gave him a long look, but then sighed and leaned back.

"Fine..." she said, and Clark heaved a sigh of relief.

"Anyway, I know you were really... ' _off_ ' those couple of days," Chloe said, "but I don't hold it against you. It's kind of dumb for those two to accept your apology and still mess with you for it later."

Clark grimaced.

"I still don't think 'a prank' makes sense, though, Chloe," Clark told her. "I mean... what about... um--"

"What, the things Lex said?" Chloe scoffed. "He lied about when the library got trashed and how. So he just lied about the, what, getting to bed thing, too? Not remembering the night before?"

"...The rumpled clothes?" Clark tentatively offered.

"Changed them at work," Chloe shrugged back. "Most of the higher-ups have a spare or two stowed away, just in case somebody spills coffee on them. Unprofessional to wear somebody's mess all day, you know. My dad does it, too," she ended, as if that removed any doubt.

"Okay," Clark said, gears turning, "but how would looking rumpled and stuff in the morning and then changing _out_ of that stuff help with the prank?" he asked. "It doesn't fit."

"Actually, it _does_ fit," Chloe said. "It he was really torqued out in the head over whatever, he probably wouldn't have had the presence of mind to change clothes," Chloe pointed out in turn. "And you pretty much caught him right as he was getting home, right?" she asked.

Clark nodded.

"Well, that explains it, then," Chloe said, in her 'that's that' voice. "You caught up with him before he was ready. He probably thought he'd have some time to change at home, and didn't want to wear the same rumpled stuff from the night before." She paused for a moment, then added, "It'd explain why he went with the seance stuff that was already there...?" When Clark nodded, she continued. "Right, so, maybe 'nothing happened' when you did whatever made-up seance thing he'd had ready to go there because he hadn't gotten the entire thing ready to prank you with, yet. Like, maybe he needed more time for the set-up."

Clark frowned.

"So, yeah. Probably... hm." Chloe thought for a moment. "It probably went down like this: Lana showed up on Lex's doorstep to do a silly seance thing. Lex was game for it. They both did it, nothing happened because, duh, no meteor rock and ghosts aren't real," Chloe shook her head, "so they did a time-honored Halloween thing and both got super drunk and tore up the library and then got the bright idea for how to prank you. And then started it off with locking the library so nobody would mess with their 'setup' and they did their little play-act at the Talon and fooled everyone," Chloe made a face, "even yours truly, and then handled business as usual. And when Lex got home and you were already there waiting for him, he realized he didn't have time to set up the rest of the prank -- not with you already there -- and went with Plan B." She paused, then added, "Hell probably try to find a way to pull you back in with something, once he's ready to pull it off-- What?" she stopped, staring at him.

"Lex called my house last night," Clark admitted, sinking lower in his chair.

"Oh?" Chloe said. "What did he want?"

"...Help," Clark said.

"Help?" Chloe echoed. She frowned. "What happened when you went back over?"

"...I didn't," Clark said, feeling like a heel, but also a little angry, because if it _had_ been all for a prank--

Chloe's eyerbows disappeared under her bangs again.

"It was 3:30 in the morning," Clark put out there. "And my dad picked up."

"Ouch?" Chloe said. "How did he sound?"

"Huh?" Clark said.

"Like, how drunk did Lex sound?" Chloe asked. At Clark's deepending frown, she said, "Well, when did you leave him, and how drunk did he seem at the time?"

"I left a little after 11pm, and he was pretty wasted," Clark said slowly, not sure where she was going with this. "He still sounded pretty drunk at 3."

Chloe snorted.

Clark wasn't happy at her response.

"He was probably faking it," Chloe said.

"He _wasn't_ ," Clark insisted.

"Oh, come on Clark," Chloe chided. "The guy's practically a fish."

"I had to carry him from the wine cellar up to the library, okay?" Clark hissed under his breath at her.

Chloe blinked at him.

"And he was okay with this?" she said in surprise.

"He... doesn't remember exactly what happened really well," Clark said, remembering how weird it had been, with Lex leaning against him like that, like he just wanted to sink right into him, under his skin -- and maybe _would have_ , if he'd been able to...

"He remembers feeling like he was 'floating', and, uh, me having something to do with it," Clark elaborated, feeling embarrassed for his friend in his absence.

"...Okay," Chloe said. "So maybe he was really that drunk before, and was back to normal levels of drunk by 3am," she shrugged. "It would explain why it took him so long to call -- whatever-it-was probably would've taken longer to set up."

Clark scrubbed at his face with his hands.

"Look, Clark, I'm not gonna leave you high and dry here, ok?" Chloe said, reaching across and putting her hand over one of his as he dropped them back to the table. "I'll go talk to people, get a bit more than just a couple theories under my belt, and once we've got some evidence to work with, I'll help you out with a counter-prank plan, ok?" she said. "Just don't go walking into anything Lex or Lana want in the next few days if you can help it." She gave him a lopsided smile. "They aren't just messing with you anymore, you know -- they dragged me into this, too, pretending stuff like that and not telling me what was up. Maybe they're both laughing at us right now, but _we'll_ be the ones with the last laugh," and Chloe got a determined faraway look at the last.

Clark winced again, feeling like _he_ was the one getting caught up in the middle now, between Chloe and Lex and maybe-Lana. And then he got a really sick, angry feeling at the thought of Lana and Lex laughing at him behind his back like he was a fool, like he was _stupid_ for believing in them and caring about them--

"Son?" Clark heard above him, and a hand came down to clap him on the shoulder.

Clark's head swiveled up and he looked up into his dad's frowning face.

Oh, geez.

"Uh, hi dad," he said. "I was just... talking with Chloe."

His dad frowned, but only said, "That's enough of a break for the morning, Clark. I need you back helping on the farm."

Clark gave Chloe an apologetic look, and was really glad he wasn't in trouble for staying there too long...

...until he thought of what his dad's reaction would have been, had he caught Clark here talking with _Lex_ instead.

Who might or might not be making stuff up and lying to him.

"You really think he's... --they're trying to prank me?" Clark asked her, as he stood up.

Chloe nodded. "I mean, what else makes sense if it's not meteor rock? _Ghosts?_ " she asked, rolling her eyes.

Yeah, she kind of did have a point there.

"I'll see what I can find out and see you tomorrow. You'll be at the farmer's market, right?" Chloe said, standing with him.

Clark nodded in somewhat-relief, then turned to follow his dad out.

He could trust Chloe to get to the bottom of things. And she'd probably call him before getting into any real trouble... if there was any.

And Clark spent the rest of the day throwing himself into his family's farmwork and trying really hard not to think about what Lex might or might not have been trying to do, there, with the whole pull-Clark-into-the-seance-thing.

Because, yeah, now that Clark thought about it, yes he had been the one to bring up redoing the ceremony, but that was only after Lex had talked about it so much. It was kind of a logical thing to do, right? If something Wall of Weird happens around a lake, you go to the lake and search around the same area for whatever-it-was, doing the same things as whoever had the weird thing happen to them first, and then handle it. If something possibly Wall of Weird happens around the mansion because somebody did something weird there, you go there and do the same thing and then handle it. Simple.

Except it wasn't, really, Clark was finding out. It was never that simple. People kept getting hurt.

...Maybe there was a better way to handle things, but Clark couldn't see how.

But yeah, if Lex had been messing with him like he had when he'd been back in high school? Clark figured he'd forgive him.

Right after he got done explaining that pulling pranks on people was _not_ a thing friends did to each other when it made the other friend worry a lot and distrust them in the future. It would be fine -- Lex had said before that he really didn't know how to be a good friend, that he hadn't had many before. So it was probably just a mistake. Clark would just explain, Lex would feel bad and fess up and apologize, then he'd tell Lana that the jig was up and she'd stop acting so mean to everybody for no reason, and... everything would be just fine.

Maybe he wouldn't even have to wait for Chloe to tell him what she'd found tomorrow. Lex usually didn't let things go. He'd probably come over and try to do whatever sometime this afternoon... or heck, maybe tonight, since doing stuff 'at night' seemed to be better for whatever spooky thing he'd had planned, or whatever.

Clark dug in and helped his dad to his utmost abilities. They made good progress with the corn harvest that day.

But Lex never came over, and Clark was actually tired by the end of the day, with a long day ahead of his tomorrow -- the fair first, and then more harvesting of the fields -- so he ended up going to bed without even trying to call Lex back, or even much wondering what was going on...

~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. Sunday, November 2, 2002: ...far too late now, time speeds back up again, and...

~*~*~*~*~*~

...and now he was finding himself standing in the middle of the farmer's market, feeling totally numb, while his friend was in _Belle Reeve_.

With all the other meteor freaks.

Oh shit.

_\--nonono, Lex isn't a freak, he's not homicidal, there was **no** meteor rock--!_

Clark controlled his breathing, ignored the mess of accidentally-dropped produce at his feet, which was the furthest thing from his mind, just then.

Instead, he stood there and clenched and unclenched his fists as he stared down at Chloe, feeling--

"What do you mean, he's in Belle Reeve?" Clark demanded flatly.

"I--" Chloe stopped short, frowning a little.

"What did Lionel _do?!?_ "

" _What?_ " Chloe said, sounding taken aback, surprised. Then she frowned again. "Lex was _hallucinating_ \--"

"No, he wasn't," Clark said.

"Yes, he was," Chloe repeated.

"He couldn't have been," Clark insisted.

"Clark--" Chloe looked pained, almost sympathetic.

Clark frowned down at her. "You know he was playing a prank," Clark said evenly, crossing his arms. "He can't be hallucinating. Lionel must be lying." Clark shuddered slightly as his brain kicked into high-gear, thinking of all the reasons why Lionel might want Lex in Belle Reeve--

He forcibly stopped himself at reason number one. "Lionel wasn't happy about the buyout --still isn't; everybody knows that," Clark pointed out urgently, reminding her. "Lex can't run LexCorp while he's locked up. Lionel must have done something--" he continued, starting to feel a little panicky, because how could he help Lex out of this?! If Lionel got Lex commited to Belle Reeve when Lex was fine, then he wouldn't be able to talk the doctors out of it -- the doctors would be in on it, helping hold him against his will and willingly going along with Lionel's plan. And if the doctors weren't willing to listen, then the only other option left was...

... _could_ Clark just storm the place and break him out?

The idea that he might need to scared the _hell_ out of him.

_\--But I can't just leave Lex there!_

"Clark, he really was hallucinating--" Chloe cut in.

"Did you actually talk to him? See him? In person?" Clark snapped out at her, gesturing.

"Well, no! But--"

Ok, so that was unconfirmed stuff right there already. "Did you hear what he told-- ... _yelled_ at whoever carted him off to Belle Reeve? --Or at the hospital once they forced him in there?" Clark pressed, because there was _no way_ Lex would have gone without a fight.

"No, but I hear they sedated him at the mansion, before--"

"--so he couldn't talk to anybody!" Clark overrode her. "Lionel would know that he was just making it up, so he took advantage really quickly before Lex could take it back and tell anybody else," Clark said, crossing his arms. Point made!

"Clark, will you just listen!!" Chloe half-yelled at him.

"I am listening! What I can't figure out is why you're suddenly acting like you don't know that Lex was just messing around with this ghost stuff!" Clark yelled back, throwing his hands up in the air. "You were the one who figured it out in the first place!"

"This isn't the first time he's hallucinated dead people!" Chloe blurted out.

...

...

Clark felt like he'd been hit with a car and knocked off of Loeb bridge all over again.

"...What?" he wheezed out, rocking back on his heels.

And then he _felt_ the blood drain out of his face as Chloe recounted a tale of Lex, as a kid, with a baby brother who had been born and died when Lex was eleven, and how he'd gone back to school and been found about a week afterwards in a corner of his room hallucinating that a blanket roll was his baby brother, rocking it and singing to it. How he'd been pulled from school for about a month, and then come back with seemingly no memory of what people had called a psychotic break.

And how most people were pretty sure that he'd been the one to kill his little brother Julian in the first place, but that it was all just unconfirmed rumor because the servants had all had ironclad non-disclosure agreements and were deathly afraid of Lionel and nobody was talking.

Clark stood there for a long time, processing everything Chloe had said.

And then he set it aside as the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.

"Lex isn't crazy," Clark said, shaking his head.

"Clark, you aren't listening--" Chloe said.

"No, _you're_ the one who isn't listening," Clark insisted. " _I_ was with Lex on Friday. He was fine." Sort of jittery, but... "He wasn't acting crazy." Just a little... off...

...maybe a little more open about stuff he shouldn't say, and weird things, and...

Clark shook his head.

"Clark, there's a reason why they call them 'psychotic breaks'," Chloe told him, sounding annoyed.

"He was fine!"

"Sometimes people just snap and--" Chloe started.

And then something occurred to him.

"--Wait, when did you hear about this thing with his baby brother?" he asked her. "And the hallucination stuff?" Because if it was just some recent rumor then they ought to be able to trace it back to Lionel and--

"A couple years ago."

Clark's stomach did flip-flops on him again.

"A couple years ago," he repeated dully, staring at her.

She frowned back up at him, crossed arms, wide stance and all.

He took a deep breath. He watched Chloe intently.

He asked, "So you'd heard it before yesterday morning?"

Suddenly her whole demeanor... shifted. Just a little. And Clark looked on in horror as he watched her do her shame-face-thing, which Clark had learned under less-than-happy cirucmstances over the last three years or so.

Clark tried not to clench his jaw to the point that his teeth felt like cracking.

"You thought he might have been hallucinating, and you didn't say anything?" he said with a deadly quiet low voice.

"Clark--" she began.

He talked right over, getting louder as he went, blood pounding in his ears. "You told me you thought he was trying to prank me--"

"Clark, that could have been it, I--"

" _Why didn't you tell me!_ " Clark demanded, yelling at her.

"I didn't know!!" Chloe yelled back, angry, as if she had any right to be. "Not for sure!"

"Chloe!!!"

"No, Clark! --Look, I only found out about how he'd trashed the library on Saturday, after you left!, and--!"

Clark shook his head at her, because he remembered what she'd said. "He couldn't have! Wouldn't have!"

"He went home at lunchtime Friday afternoon," Chloe continued, sounding almost desperate. "The security guard at LexCorp who let him out said he was acting odd, like he was almost in a trance or something. When he got to the mansion, he checked in with the mansion staff, said he was going to eat there, but he never showed up. Some of the staff remember him heading down the hallway to the library."

"No, they would've heard him--" Clark began, repeating Chloe's earlier argument from the day before.

"Except they were all at lunch in the kitchen, and those rooms are soundproof so that they can't be heard down the hallway," Chloe continued persuasively. "I checked. Nobody else was around, and one of the other staff almost entered the room earlier before they were pulled aside. They only unlocked the door and got a few steps in," Chloe said, "and they didn't want to admit it that afternoon, because... well, I think you know why," Chloe said. "But the room really _wasn't_ wrecked that morning. Not until later. It had to have been him," Chloe told him.

Clark started shaking his head, but Chloe just kept going. "I know you don't want to hear this, Clark, but--"

"But you kept this ghost-hallucination thing from me, even after I told you about the phone call!" Because if he'd known, then Clark would have gone straight over there on Saturday, immediately, forget what his dad might have said. Chloe would have known he would've done that, too, wanting to check up on Lex, make sure he was okay-- "Why didn't you call me and let me know, as soon as you knew?" Clark asked, because he _couldn't_ think of a good reason. Why would anybody _not_ want Clark to know that something was wrong with his friend, with Lex, until-- unless...

Clark suddenly went hot, then cold.

"Did you _want_ Lex to snap?" he ground out dangerously, stepping over the fallen bushel, advancing on Chloe, fists clenched. "Did you _not_ want me to find him, try and help him, because I might have been able to--" Clark choked.

He barely managed to get out, hoarsely, shaking so hard he felt like he might come undone, "Was it just not good enough of a _story_ for you _if he didn't end up in an insane asylum?!_ "

Chloe rocked back like she'd been physically struck, and her eyes went so wide that Clark saw the whites around them completely.

But barely a second later she rounded back on him in a full-on bout of anger, just as strong: " _I'm_ not the one who _made_ him do the stupid seance _twice_ , Clark -- that was _you!!!_ "

Clark barely choked back a whimper, blinking multiple times desperately over burning eyes, as shame and panicked pain overrode rage for a moment. He stumbled backwards, kicing the bushel basket and barely noticing it spill even more of its load.

Chloe didn't look the least bit sympathetic at all, quietly standing there, fuming as she glared up at him. Like it was all his fault.

...Heck, it probably was.

"Son, what--?!" he heard, and his dad was right there suddenly, picking his way around spilled apples on the ground, forwning in irritation and maybe a little concern.

Clark fisted his hands in his hair and shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment against the guilty pain stabbing away inside him.

"You-- you--" He rounded on his dad, more of a safe target than Chloe just then, because-- "You heard him on the phone. _You should've known,_ " because he was his dad, an adult -- he was supposed to know these things. ...Except he didn't care about Lex; he didn't even like him, maybe even hated him. He only cared about Clark, and his stupid harvest, and... and...

"I shouldn't have listened to you!" Clark cried out angrily, frustrated in the extreme. His first instinct _had been_ to _go_ , go back **that night** , at least until...

"What?" his dad frowned at Clark, glancing at Chloe.

"Lex is in Belle Reeve for hallucinating dead people," Chloe informed his dad, arms still crossed, still watching Clark with something like anger and annoyance and censure and nothing like concern at all.

"What?" his dad said, eyebrows raising. He blinked a few times, glancing between Chloe and Clark.

"...Can't say I'm surprised," Jonathan said finally. "The man's trouble."

Clark made a pained choking sound as he stomped off.

He ignored his dad's shouts after him and rounded one corner, then another, blindly moving, barely paying enough attention to avoid walking into people, just trying to get away from the crowd, from everyone, off to the outskirts of the marketplace.

...and the next thing he knew he was flinching back from Lana, who he hadn't expected to run into anywhere at all.

"What do you want?" she said coldly.

"Nothing, I'm leaving," Clark said back angrily, feeling even more miserable now, scrubbing at his eyes and moving around her.

He heard an angry sigh and he barely stopped in time when a hand shot out and grabbed his arm. He really just wanted to shake her off and leave, but... he grimaced and finally turned a little towards her, instead.

"What's wrong?" Lana asked in an aggrieved, put-upon tone.

"Lex is in Belle Reeve because he pretended to see his dead mom in front of Lionel and everybody believed he meant it, and even Chloe thinks he's actually hallucinating or something now, even though it was just a prank," Clark rattled off, pulling away a little.

Her hand dropped and she snorted. "Well, serves him right. Maybe he'll learn his lesson when it's his dad who he's upset."

"...What?" Clark said, looking up at her in shock.

"Oh, please," Lana said derisively. "You know." When Clark blinked at her blankly, she added, with an eyeroll, "You said he told you, remember?"

"He didn't tell me what made you angry, just the stuff before," Clark said, wondering why she was saying anything now.

"Oh, come on, Clark!" Lana said angrily "I know it was you who told him!"

"Told him what?!" Clark said, aggravated.

"About my parents!"

 _Oh my god._ "Lana, _everybody_ knows your parents are dead!" Clark said, throwing his hands out, encompassing the town. "That's _not_ a big deal!" She'd had her picture on the cover of Time magazine, for god's sake!

"You told him about what happened at the graveyard!"

It took Clark a moment to catch her meaning. "Lana, it isn't a secret that you go there a lot, or even that you talk to their graves!" Clark pointed out. "Whitney knew that, too, and your Aunt, and probably a lot of other people. _Chloe_ knows," and she had to have heard it somewhere.

Lana looked absolutely irate all of a sudden. "You think _that's_ what I'm angry about?!" she yelled. "I'm angry with you because _you told him what I told you!_ And then he tried to use it to--!!" She clamped down on the rest and shook her head vigorously.

"What are you talking about?" Clark said, taken aback. "All I've ever told him was why you go there sometimes, not what you say or anything!" Because Lex had been curious, sure, but, really, Clark knew when a conversation was private, and Lex hadn't pressed. --He didn't repeat Lex's conversations with other people, either, and not just because they wouldn't get it.

" **Don't lie to me!** " Lana yelled, on the edge of angry tears. "I know you helped him do it!"

Clark flinched backwards, then blinked once, twice, and started to get a really bad feeling.

"Lana," he said slowly, licking his lips, treading oh-so-carefully. "Could you just... assume that I am really sorry for... what I did and that I didn't mean for you to be hurt... and that I am an idiot and really don't know anything about what Lex... actually ended up doing to you on Halloween, and just tell me exactly what happened, please?"

" _He pretended to be my mother!!!_ " Lana shrieked out, and Clark forgot how to breathe.

"W-what?" he asked wholly taken aback.

" _Lex **Luthor**_ ," Lana spat out like a curse, worse than his father ever had, "Sat in his stupid library, on the floor, not three feet away from me, and _pretended_ to-- to _channel_ the ghost of my _mother_ ," Lana hissed out, her lips pulling away from her teeth as she did so. "He sat there and said the most _awful_ things and-- and he tried to convince me-- that he was _her_ and--" Lana looked distressed as hell, and angry, and on the verge of tears, as she ground to a halt. She shook her head, stopping, and wrapped her arms around herself.

Clark suddenly felt sick, because, no-- Chloe had talked about the hallucinations and how he'd wrecked the library, and Lex had said he'd had lost time that night, but with what had happened with the library that meant there were times he couldn't remember _twice_ now at least and... oh god, Lex hadn't been lying to him at all, not even once, he really _couldn't_ remember any of it, because he would _never_ do anything like that to _anybody_ if he'd known what he was doing, it _hadn't_ been a prank, _**he really was crazy--**_

But then Lana looked up at Clark with nearly-equal anger and betrayal, and said accusingly: "And I _know_ you were in on it! I know it was _you_ who told him! I never told anyone else what I told you about my dad and-- and--!"

Clark's eyes widened.

"I **hate** him," Lana ended viciously. "He _deserves_ to be locked away someplace for doing _that_ \-- for thinking _that_ is ok to do to people." She gave Clark a vindictive, watery smile at she stared up at him. "I'm _glad_ his dad didn't put up with it."

Clark breathed in. He breathed out.

He stared at Lana without really seeing her.

He brought up his hands and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.

He laughed, shakily.

"...Clark?" he heard in an uneasy tone, but he didn't care.

He could care less about what Lana thought or felt just then.

Because...

"I never told him anything you told me at the graves," Clark said.

There was a pause.

" _Fine._ Be that way," he heard Lana spit out in disbelief and rekindled anger.

Her footsteps moved away.

Not important.

What was?

Lex had told Lana something that nobody else knew except him and Lana. Something Lex hadn't known. Something Lex _couldn't_ have known, unless...

_Lex isn't crazy._

But then it occurred to him.

_...It's not all my fault._

Because Clark had forced Lex to do it the second time, but the first time had been _Lana_.

Things had started happening _right after_ Lana had performed the first seance, not later. It had only taken it just once.

And _Lana_ hadn't told anybody what had happened, so nobody could help Lex. Nobody had known enough to know or understand what had been going on, least of all Lex himself, and...

...if Clark _had_ known, he never would have suggested, offered, pushed...

_...It's not my fault._

And it had had nothing to do with the meteor rock, either.

Lex wasn't crazy, and Clark knew that he wouldn't get better in Belle Reeve. Nobody would believe that Lex could actually see and talk to ghosts, or that he could sometimes be possessed by them -- especially not that a seance-ritual-thing had caused it. Nobody there would even try to listen, let alone help. Not unless...

Clark slowly dropped his hands.

He turned his head and stared in the direction of Belle Reeve.

He knew what he had to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	7. Sunday, November 2, 2002: ...you are late-late-late, as you finally go once-more for-the-first-time into the breach...

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Hi," Clark said at the front desk of reception area at Belle Reeve. "I'm looking for my mom. I don't know where she is."

The dumpy, bleary-eyed nurse on the other side of the desk looked thoroughly unimpressed. "Try the police station for missing persons," she suggested blandly, eyeing him over the book she was reading. It looked like a trashy romance novel.

Clark mentally grimaced at her, but on the outside he just shrugged and gave her a slight smile. "I know she's here--"

"Right," the woman smiled up at him nastily. "You want a visitor's pass to see her?" She batted her eyelashes at him.

All right. That did it.

Clark clenched his jaw and squared his shoulders. "My mother is Martha Kent -- _Lionel Luthor's_ **personal** assistant," he talked over her when she seemed about to interrupt. "She needed some files from the office and asked me to deliver them to her," he added, holding up a bland-looking manilla envelope. "Mr. Luthor requested that they be delivered immediately."

"I'll get them to her," the nurse said, dropping her book with a gleam in her eyes of sudden interest, and standing up and reaching out for them.

Clark just pulled his hand back and looked down his nose at her, not letting her snatch them away. "I"m sorry," he said, all-politeness and so thin-edged that you could cut glass with his tone, "these are private LuthorCorp documents. I was specifically told to deliver them to her hands, and hers alone."

"Why didn't she go get them herself?" the nurse said, narrowing her eyes, obviously looking for an angle of her own, eyeing the file.

 _Yeah, I bet you think these are files on Lex,_ Clark thought nastily. _Bet you want a piece of him just like everybody else. Well, you're not getting them._ Not that it mattered. He'd snuck in and grabbed the envelope and some blank forms from her carry-bag from home right before heading over, because he'd known that he'd need an excuse to get through. The letterhead was right, but the rest was blank; Clark figured that if he had to, he could undo the string and pull it up just enough to show the header. Allowing any more than that would've been suspicious anyway.

But instead of trying to answer her question or justify himself, Clark just snorted. "She's his personal assistant, not a gopher," he said, implying that he, by extension, was, which was _so_ a lie. "Maybe Mr. Luthor wanted her by his side," he ended in a _how should I know? I'm not him,_ tone. "You want I should ask for you, once I'm finished handing it over to them? ...Nurse Johnson?" he asked snidely, glancing down at her nametag.

The nurse backed off immediately.

"They're at Room 405, east wing," she snapped out primly, sitting down abruptly.

It did not escape Clark that she'd known exactly where Lex was without having to check.

"Don't I get a visitor's badge?" Clark said smoothly, casually leaning up against the counter, pulling a Lex and not budging an inch. He wasn't stupid -- she'd mentioned the passes earlier, and he'd seen a few people walk by with badges on. He wasn't about to let this woman cause issues for him getting in and out, accidentally or not.

The nurse's eye twitched, then she went through the motions for him. When she was done printing the badge, she slapped it down on the counter in front of him, giving him the stink eye.

Oh yeah. She'd _totally_ tried to do that to him on purpose.

Clark reminded himself to figure out which car was hers and screw up the suspension or something later.

He picked up the badge, glanced down at it to make sure it wasn't obviously screwed up -- wonder of wonders, it didn't look like it was, at least to him anyway -- then clipped it to the pocket of his jacket.

"Thank you," he said with a smile as if he meant it, in exactly the same way his mother did when catering Nell Potter's events, and with that he turned and headed for the elevators.

_Bitch._

He grimaced to himself as the doors closed and he punched the button for the fourth floor. _If they've got people like **that** working here, I really **absolutely** need to get him out of here ASAP._

~*~*~*~*~*~

He got off the elevator and passed a trashcan on the fourth floor. He glanced around -- no security cameras, nobody looking -- and used his heat vision on them, burning them to a cinder before tossing the papers into the can. His mom wasn't here, after all -- she was back at the farm, working on the books and trying to catch up, since she'd be back working for Lionel again once the weekend was over and Monday morning hit. He wouldn't want to have to explain what he was doing with a bunch of LuthorCorp papers on him or how he'd gotten them, blank or not.

 _Which just goes to show how much the lady at the desk had been paying attention earlier,_ he thought with a mental eyeroll. _Well, maybe that's a good thing, though. If they don't really pay all that much attention to who goes where coming in, they probably aren't paying all that much attention to who leaves, either. ...Good for me and Lex, anyway._

He glanced at the floormap on the wall -- thank god it was right there next to the elevators -- and then shook his head.

He went walking towards Room 405 in the _west_ wing, and hoped that the woman hadn't made up the room number, too. He didn't want to be wandering around longer than he needed to. He could use X-ray vision if he had to, but he didn't like using it and didn't want to if he could help it; it still gave him headaches sometimes.

Plus, if somebody caught him staring off into space or at the walls in the middle of an insane asylum, that would probably not be a very good thing.

But he turned a corner, and another corner, and the corner after that, and for the first time in his life, almost sighed a little sigh of relief at seeing Lionel Luthor in the flesh.

He marched right up to the man, pretty much ignoring the other couple of doctors hovering nearby.

_Oh, geez._

" _Lex_ ," he breathed out, seeing the state of his best friend, sitting on the floor of the padded room. God, he was scary-looking, paler than he'd ever seen him, with dark bags under his eyes that were so bad they almost looked like bruises.

And then there was the straitjacket.

"Who...?" Lionel queried, his head swinging around, sightless eyes hidden by large shades.

"Clark Kent," Clark supplied. "I'm his friend. I came as soon as I heard about what happened this morning."

"I didn't give you permission to--"

"Lex gave me permission to come see him whenever I wanted, a long time ago," Clark interrupted. "I don't see how it matters _where_ he is for that."

Lionel gave out a slight startled bark of a laugh.

"He's not crazy," Clark began.

"Don't be absurd," one of the doctors began, but cut himself off with a quiet choked sound at just the slightest tilt of Lionel's head.

"My son," Lionel said grimly, "has been under an unfortunate amount of stress lately--"

"He's been handling LexCorp just fine," Clark said dangerously, stepping closer.

Lionel paused. "Do you even know why he's here?" he asked simply.

"Yeah," Clark said. "He saw somebody that you couldn't. Which, y'know, isn't all that surprising, considering _you're blind_ ," Clark ended roughly, crossing his arms.

...Clark was pretty sure that anybody could've heard a pin drop, if he'd had one on him.

"My son thought he saw his dead mother," Lionel said bluntly.

"And you're still handling the fallout from a LuthorCorp medical project that had a teenaged patient doing a Dr. Jekyl -Mr. Hyde impression every time he tried to get himself a tan. What's your point?" Clark shot back.

Lionel bridled at the comeback, but then seemed to stop himself in the middle of a breath.

"Lex isn't crazy," Clark pressed. "And it's not a meteor rock thing, either." It wasn't that big a deal to bring up the stuff right in front of Lionel, after all -- he'd been doing meteor rock projects for years already with Level 3 at the plant, and other stuff. It wasn't like he didn't already know. "I don't have proof yet," he said, "but what happened started Thursday night. Lex and I were trying to figure stuff out Friday, but we just didn't get that far yet." Yeah, he was leaving a lot of stuff out, but so what? "I didn't see him Saturday, and I really wish I had," _oh god, do I wish that,_ "but we were working on it. We'll figure it out like we always do, together. We just need a little more time."

"Lex is delusional," Lionel said slowly, like it hurt him to 'admit'.

"Did you even ask anybody at the mansion if they saw his mom?" Clark put out there. And he almost grinned as he watched Lionel stiffen. "So you don't really even know for sure what's going on to begin with," Clark added.

"You--"

"I'm going in there to talk with him," Clark said adamantly, stepping towards the door to the padded cell. "And I'm staying here until he's leaving."

"Oh, really?" Lionel said, tilting his head towards him and starting to get a slow smile.

"Yup," Clark said, with his hand on the door, and then he played his ace-in-the-hole. "And you can explain to my mom on Monday morning why I'm here and not in school, too."

Lionel's brow furrowed, and then he started.

"You're Martha Kent's boy!" Lionel exclaimed in shock.

"Yeah," Clark said. "I am."

"--You aren't going to be able to do anything for him," Lionel told him, stepping forward and shooting out a hand.

Clark stared down at the restraining hand on his arm, then shrugged it off, pulling away, more than a little weirded out. The only people who really ever touched him were his parents.

"Just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it's not there," Clark said with a frown. "Just because nobody else sees something, doesn't mean it's not there and not actually happening -- there was that whole thing with the Palmers last year, too," he ended quietly. "I _am_ going to figure out exactly why what happened happened, and I'm _going_ to help him." Because now that Clark had finally gotten Lana to talk, he knew the _what_ , if not the _why_ , and probably the _how_.

 _I'm going to help Lex fix this,_ he almost said, but he didn't really want to think about what would happen if Lex couldn't find a way to fix whatever this was. Lex was smarter than he was, and Lex was a lot better at fixing things, too. All Clark knew how to do was help.

Clark took a step away from Lionel, putitng some distance between them, and totally ignored the doctors' protests as he opened the door.

And then he took a deep breath, steeled himself, and went in.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
